TheHighlandHowler:The automated cutter/splitters are cooler. One is even mounted on a Bobcat!

Extremely cool. My first thought was how much money you could make driving that around and splitting wood for people. My second thought was that you better be a good mechanic if you are going to operate one of those.

mrshowrules:TheHighlandHowler: The automated cutter/splitters are cooler. One is even mounted on a Bobcat!

Extremely cool. My first thought was how much money you could make driving that around and splitting wood for people. My second thought was that you better be a good mechanic if you are going to operate one of those.

I used to support the AS400 that the family that has the DC Bobcat franchise had to have. Their mechanics were shipped off to school at least twice a year. If you had real Bobcat mechanic skills you'd make a fukton more cash doing that than splitting wood.

I'd like to live somewhere cold enough where splitting wood was a requirement. I live in central florida, we've got drunk one night (bad decision #1) and done it just to prove we were men and we could do it (bad decision #2 -- wrong tools for that)

Yes. It hurt. But splitting water oak logs into firewood was bad decision #3.

Smackledorfer:That wood looked to split with far lass impact than anything I've cut. If the only downward impact is from the slow speed and whatever weight is left after that spring, I'm amazed it cuts anything.

Well, I'm guessing that the spring doesn't bear much of the weight until the blade has engaged and split the wood, the rest is just follow-through a split log. To put it another way, I'll posit that 70% of that massive cutter will bring its force to bear on the first couple inches of the wood, by the time you're halfway through the log the spring is strongly resisting but it doesn't matter as the log has essentially been split at that point.

Unless you've cut a log with a 300-pound blade, with the entire mass of the blade positioned exactly behind the cutting surface, then I don't think you can make that comparison.

deadsanta:Smackledorfer: That wood looked to split with far lass impact than anything I've cut. If the only downward impact is from the slow speed and whatever weight is left after that spring, I'm amazed it cuts anything.

Well, I'm guessing that the spring doesn't bear much of the weight until the blade has engaged and split the wood, the rest is just follow-through a split log. To put it another way, I'll posit that 70% of that massive cutter will bring its force to bear on the first couple inches of the wood, by the time you're halfway through the log the spring is strongly resisting but it doesn't matter as the log has essentially been split at that point.

Unless you've cut a log with a 300-pound blade, with the entire mass of the blade positioned exactly behind the cutting surface, then I don't think you can make that comparison.

Probably not. I have used mechanical ones which seem to get a lot more force and still hit issues with hard oversized pieces.

HeadLever:natazha: That would work on about 15% of the wood I have. The rest are knot farms than take a couple wedges, a maul, and occasionally the chain saw, to split.

Yep, around here it would be perfect for the lodgepole. For the Doug fir and cottonwood, not so much.

lording oak, cherry, hickory, maple over you west coast people! burning a big hickory tree right now that was in one of our back pastures standing dead, that is the hottest burning wood, read oak burns the longest it seems though...

TheHighlandHowler:The automated cutter/splitters are cooler. One is even mounted on a Bobcat!

Our consulting forester has one mounted on a Lamborghini (tractor). Whole trees are pulled into it, split firewood comes out the other end. He got a deal on it used, $70,000. The version in the video may be cheaper.

Headso:lording oak, cherry, hickory, maple over you west coast people! burning a big hickory tree right now that was in one of our back pastures standing dead, that is the hottest burning wood, read oak burns the longest it seems though..

Us western folks wold burn the house down if we ever moved east. Burning 'real' hardwood (not inlcuding cottonwood and quaken aspen) out here is about a foreign as you can get.

Headso:HeadLever: natazha: That would work on about 15% of the wood I have. The rest are knot farms than take a couple wedges, a maul, and occasionally the chain saw, to split.

Yep, around here it would be perfect for the lodgepole. For the Doug fir and cottonwood, not so much.

lording oak, cherry, hickory, maple over you west coast people! burning a big hickory tree right now that was in one of our back pastures standing dead, that is the hottest burning wood, read oak burns the longest it seems though...

so long as you don't have 8" knots at 12 inches on center it is about the easiest to split for the size.

the trick with cottonwood is to split is as green as you can.

Only if it is froze. If it is thawed, you get wet trying to chop the rubbery stuff. We generally let it dry for a few years before doing anything with it since it is mostly water and is damn heavy when green.

Most of the eastern hardwoods have about 50% higher heat than the pines and spongy hardwoods we burn out here in the intermountain west. Not sure about Doug fir and Yellow Pine as they are not on your list.